Review of Disney on Ice Silver Anniversary Show

It’s not often that I get to say that my entire weekend was awesome, but that’s exactly how it panned out this week. I passed Hubby the parenting baton on Friday afternoon and headed into the city for a top secret blog thing, which I’m ridiculously excited about. I also got to meet a bunch of ladies I only knew previously by their Twitter handles – it’s always lovely to put faces to names.

After that I met great friends for a catch up over Japanese food and sake at the Southbank, which Mel has written about (thanks hon). Usually this would have been the extent of my entire month’s social life, but the very best was yet to come.

The magic of Disney really can’t be under estimated in my opinion. I was a late 70’s baby and grew up on Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. It was pure escapism from my own turbulent childhood, and those films brought me so much happiness in my formative years. I don’t think I was ever a fairies and princesses type of girl, but my kids most definitely, and unashamedly, are. Even 2yo Freddy, bless his little heart. You can imagine the squeals of delight upon getting the email one dreary February morning, asking if I’d like to review the show. Needless to say that the countdown commenced that very day.

“X more sleeps mama, I’m so excited and am going to dress up as Snow White!”

We had brilliant seats, just eight rows from the stage, and were surrounded by familiar looking faces.

A spectacular show

Disney on Ice sure know how to put on an awe inspiring show. From the second the skaters come onto the stage it’s a feast for the eyes and ears. Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy and Goofy narrate, and there were six parts in total. As well as a visually mind blowing intro, they recreated scenes and sung familiar songs from The Lion King, Peter Pan, The Little Mermaid and much to the audience’s pleasure Frozen.

The skaters were mesmerising throughout, and you know you’re on to a winner when three children aged 2, 4 and 6 manage to be still and quiet for two whole hours! All in all it was flawless, I can’t think of a single bad thing to say. The only grumble of the five of us combined (from Miss. P) was that Snow White wasn’t there.

A few tips

The earlier the better: Getting to the venue well ahead of when the doors were opening was a great idea. As well as our show at the arena, there was rugby on at the stadium, which meant that the area was packed to the rafters and moving slowly. It took us almost half an hour just to walk from the tube to the arena, and roughly the same again to get to our seats once we were inside. These things always take so much longer than we think they will.

Preplan your meal (if you are having one): We promised we’d treat the kids to dinner after the show, and headed to the fab retail park behind the arena. Although we were walking as fast as we possibly could we still got to our preferred restaurant too late, and were told it would be a 20-30 minute wait for a table. Fortunately our second choice had space for us and brought our meal out super fast. If I was doing this again I would definitely phone ahead and pre-book a table.

Take the stress out of your journey home: We live on the London borders of the south west, and don’t drive, so had a two hour journey ahead of us each way. As with anything exciting, getting there is usually the easy part, because you’re being driven by momentum and anticipation. Getting home is where the meltdowns and fallouts occur, so we loaded the tablet up with a suitable film to keep the kids entertained and fighting to a minimum.

Stop the press, they slept: Our exhausted little crew arrived home at almost 9pm, absolutely spent after a great day. Hubby and I got the kids to sleep as quickly as we could and went straight to bed ourselves. The cherry on the cake was that all three children stayed in their beds and didn’t start waking up until gone 6am. The magic of Disney really is alive!

From the mouths of babes

The show will be touring until the 15th May, so there is still time to book your tickets!

**Disclaimer: we were given press tickets to see the show for free. All words and photos are our own. For my full disclosure policy please click here**